a blog about artisans and the handmade life!

charity: water

Every year I feel it happening ever so slightly…
It is my disgust with how this time of year has been turned to nothing but gluttonous want!

I am not opposed to gift giving, in fact I really like to give gifts and receive them. But in moderation. This whole thing of writing lists and then rushing around to buy enormously expensive gifts goes against my innate beliefs. Just the other day my son was asking me for these headphones for Christmas and I whirled around and told him to stop! that if he said one more word that we would spend Christmas some other way. That we would not be sitting around gloating over expensive gifts and too much food.

Just what can I do to make a differencethis Christmas, that is the question I am asking myself. Better yet I am asking what it is that I can do to help others.

I remember vividly the one year that I just could not stand the thought of sitting around another Thanksgiving table with my stuffed belly and feeling as though something was missing. In my heart I knew exactly what the missing link was… helping others.

So talking to my husband we decided to take our small daughter to the local homeless mission for Thanksgiving day and help serve the men, women, and children there. It gave me so much joy to watch as my small daughter moved among the tables to hand plates filled with food to others who really needed it. They loved our little girl and she loved them back! It is one of my most treasured memories of her childhood.

Just yesterday I was standing in a store and accidentally (honest!) overhead a women tell someone not to bring a particular person to Thanksgiving dinner. She reasoned that it was her day to relax and she didn’t have room for anybody else. How sad that we can’t find time to make room for others at our tables, or in our lives.

So I celebrate Christmas for what it is… the birth of my Savior, Jesus. Not what I can get under the tree. Or how many cookies I can bake and eat, or if I have the best decorated house in my neighborhood. It is time to remember our humanity and use these times to reach out to others.

This year I am supporting charity: water.org, which is an organization dedicated to bringing clean and safe drinking water to every person in the world. I will be twittering, blogging, and on my birthday I will be asking for donations from friends and family. I also have some other ideas to help raise monies to donate to this worthy cause. Through donations this organization offers freshwater wells, rainwater catchments and sand filters to parts of the developing nations worldwide.

Now this organization and so many others, not mentioned here, are truly giving the gifts of their time, talents, money, and hearts. Reach out this Christmas season… make it count!